


The Forest For The Trees

by lackofwisdom (jdmcool)



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-22
Updated: 2014-04-22
Packaged: 2018-01-20 09:44:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1505882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jdmcool/pseuds/lackofwisdom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The memories don’t come back all at once. Perhaps if they did, he would know what to do with himself if he had all the information. If he could pinpoint, for certain, whether or not the good outweighed the bad he might know what to do with himself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Forest For The Trees

**Author's Note:**

> I own nothing and barely know what I'm doing. Woo.

The memories don’t come back all at once. Perhaps if they did, he would know what to do with himself if he had all the information. If he could pinpoint, for certain, whether or not the good outweighed the bad he might know what to do with himself. But the memories come back at odd intervals and they aren’t always in one piece. They blur together in ways that make them feel wrong only in the depths of his bones or are just lies he can’t make himself forget.

The memory of that man, Steve Rogers, they’re real at times. The exhibit convinced him that he was wrong to doubt the vague memories of Steve being smaller. Smaller and shorter and stubborn.

As he sits in the small theater watching some woman who is familiar in a vague way, he can only think of seeing Mr. Smith Goes to Washington with that smaller man. The way Steve raved on about the movie for weeks because he truly believed in it all, the ridiculous urge he had to do good and make a difference. Steve had spoken about what a great actor that Jimmy Stewart guy was and how more people should be like his character in the film. How the world might be better that way.

A happy memory he could believe in while a man he couldn’t think of as himself suddenly appeared on the screen. The narrator spoke of that man, James Buchanan Barnes, with a strange sort of reverence while he sat there, muttering that man’s name, rank, service number and birthday. Four things that brought back flashes of a battle they lost, of lying on a slab praying for death while Zola examined him.

_No._

The examinations came later, he reminds himself. Tests on the arm the remade. A similar room with similar people, but a different outcome. Frozen in a chamber with a metal arm instead of being rescued by Steve. Years of being a weapon for Hydra instead of the sounds of drunken revelry from those who were happy to be alive. Happy to be alive and still fighting, a feeling that neither he nor James Buchanan Barnes had felt from what he had remembered.

Happy to see Steve, terrified of his change, but happy to see him. Never happy to still be fighting.

Unlike Rogers—Steve? Same man, but Rogers came with a different context—Rogers had wanted to go into war. The little idiot had wanted to serve his country and lay his life on the line. Never once did he see how lucky he was to be too small and too weak to go to war. Didn’t see the way that James Buchanan Barnes had nearly cried when he was drafted.

_Never let him know._

It’s one of his clearer memories, the way James Buchanan Barnes had stared at his draft papers as though it was a sick joke. It had been a sick joke. Steve wanted to join so badly and he, Bucky because Bucky was the kid who felt his world crumble, he got forced into it all against his will.  Had to report for his physical and everything else rather than ignore it or try to get out of it. Couldn’t try and dodge it like some did because, damn it, Steve was desperate to enlist and how could he look that little bastard in the face if he ran.

He remembers that clearly. Much like he remembers serving alongside the Commandos before they were the Commandos. Hard to forget the visceral smell of blood and dirt. The screams of the dying and the look on her face when she saw him.

That’s not right. She wasn’t there.

Natalia came later in a blur of fighting, sex and shooting her to get rid of that diplomat. Or was he another agent? In either case, Odessa isn’t enemy territory and she lived. She lived and kept working right alongside him, though she never knew it. It wasn’t pertinent for her know how many times she crossed his path, taking out targets that he was after. SHIELD was the other side of the coin for Hydra, but they were held together by the same goals more than they knew.

He doesn’t remember her when he sees a red head walking down the street or hears someone speaking in Russian. He doesn’t remember her when he catches women fighting on TV or see couples being affectionate with each other. Natalia Romonova is a ghost that haunts his better nights. She keeps him warm in a mix of fantasies and a different kind of tension. Gives him a better reason to wake up breathless in the middle of the night. He doesn’t know her, the woman, any more than he knows Steve Rogers, but as a fantasy, she is something he tries to hold onto in the night.

It never works, but he tries. Gives it everything he has because the alternative is a myriad of people he can barely place. Those in charge of Hydra and SHIELD before it became SHIELD. Nothing but people in very specific clothes giving him orders to kill. The difference between the Hydra troops he killed during the war compared to the people Hydra had him kill is minimal. It’s almost always him looking through the scope of a gun at some man who never saw it coming until there was a bullet in his head. There is never any real noise from such a distance, just a body falling to the floor.

There’s the politician he was forced to kill in a hotel room in London. The man didn’t agree with whoever it was that thawed him out and sent him away with his orders. Poor bastard turned a strange shade of blue as he choked the life out of him, made a wet noise when more pressure was applied. The memory of killing that man will never kill him up at night. It’s a fact that happened, like so many others.

The first of the people targeted using Zola’s algorithm, however, was a young woman. She was smart and could’ve effected history for years to come if she was given the chance. If she had been older than sixteen. If he hadn’t waited for hours for her to head home on her bike before shooting her, right through the heart and leaving. She was the sort of person he remembered in details that had never happened because he would never stay to watch her bleed out on the road and wasn’t around to see who had found her body. Yet when her lifeless green eyes appeared flashed in his mind, he breathed faster.

_It was all in the past. She was gone now. They were all gone_

But even thoughts like that didn’t make it easier. It didn’t help him on the day to day basis. Couldn’t keep him from getting lost over innocuous details. How a child’s smile made him think of a mother or father Hydra had him killed or the way strange looks from strangers left him fighting the urge to kill them since dead men didn’t ask questions.

Knowing that his life as James Buchanan Barnes, as an asset, as Bucky, was all behind him didn’t keep his throat from tightening over a smug face he didn’t actually know on the cover of a paper alongside a body he remembered. The cold, rain filled night came back clearly. Standing in the middle of the road as some car raced toward him. One shot took out the tire, sent it spinning off the road.

The screeching noise that filled the air made him smile as he entered the lab. He was supposed to be going to the lab to see what Stark had done to his gun and—that wasn’t right. No soft glows filled the night, just Howard pained and pleading for Maria to speak to him. Hard concrete or wet grass didn’t make a difference. The memories blurred when Howard looked away from his task to him, shocked or pleased, he couldn’t make it out, but the man still called out to him. Still called him ‘Barnes’ and he wasn’t that man. He wasn’t anyone as he slit his throat with a piece of glass. Left him in the car to bleed out, though not without getting the genius’s blood on his hand and uniform.

A uniform he wasn’t wearing. A Howard that was older and looked less like the smug billionaire on the paper. Still a yellow glow of headlights instead of room lights, maybe? The memories blurred, but the outcome was still the same. He had still killed someone he had known.

Would’ve killed Natalia but the bullet took the fight out of her. Left her on the ground and scared like some animal. Then Steve saved her.

Not Odessa, but D.C.

Steve was the mission. Steve was his friend. Steve let him fall and then saved him. Failed to save him after all the times Bucky had stuck up for him.

He couldn’t see the forest for the trees in his mind. Just memories that didn’t match up because Steve wouldn’t just let him die. Natalia would’ve put up more of a fight than she had. Should’ve died back in Odessa since he, the asset could not have been careless enough to leave loose ends. Howard was someone who had helped him. Had helped Zola, who turned a soldier into a machine.

A machine that was supposed to remember how to be a man. He wasn’t an asset but not James Buchanan Barnes. Not for lack of trying, just for lack of understanding. If he knew what to trust, if he knew the full story of who he was supposed to be, he was certain he would know how to react. But he didn’t. He merely struggle through the slow remembering, the parts of him he could live with lying amidst the growing number of memories he couldn’t live with.

_What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger._

A cruel phrase that seemed like something Steve had told him. Sometime after a fight with some punk. Further proof that Rogers had never understood how badly coming out stronger could make a person wish they’d died.


End file.
